Autistic Children Blog

I’m feeling very out of sorts today. I’ve had a busy few days and am feeling overloaded. I’m also mentally exhausted from Bridie who is getting worse and worse, abusing me with her temper for most of her waking time. I’m going to take her to see Nerida along with Beth and see if there is anything underlying her behaviour cos I’ve just had enough. I got home after dropping them off this morning and burst into tears. I thought if I could get Beth under control then it would all be lovely, now I’m finding that, as far as behaviour is concerned, she’s the easiest one to deal with. There’s only 3 days left until the holidays and I’m dreading it. I’m madly cleaning the house this week so that I can be prepared to do nothing but play all day, that’s the only way I’ll get through it. Friends have kindly offered to have Bridie for me which we will do at times, but I don’t want her to feel like she’s being rewarded for her behaviour by going for plays all the time. Anyway, back to the blog.

Paul worked all weekend as their work is moving to the other side of the city. He had to supervise and left each morning before the kids got up, getting home at 10.30 on Sunday night. Saturday we went to Bev and John’s for lunch after swimming lessons. Sunday I decided to take the kids to the movies to make up for the fact that the kids wouldn’t be seeing their Dad much. We went to see Despicable Me. What a good movie! I loved it. Oh and the kids enjoyed it too! We then popped into the Belgrave Book Barn where Bethie picked a joke book, Bill picked a Horrible Histories book and Bridie picked a sticker book which we spent the afternoon doing. It was quite a pleasant afternoon but I was glad the kids went back to school on Monday. I take my hat off to all you single mums out there, I don’t know how you do it.

Monday was quite mentally exhausting too. One of our local members, Tammy Lobato, organised a forum with other members of parliament to address the needs of individuals with a child with a disability. The HAGS group were invited and I was pleased to note that on the letter that went out to others our name was mentioned as being invited. This means we are getting a name in the area. Along with myself were Catriona, Amanda and Margaret. I think there are great strides being made as far as education for special needs kids, I’m just not sure whether it will be done in time for my Beth going to High School. There is already talk of annexes in schools for the autistic kids, with better training for teachers in mainstream schools. There was also a clear need for speech therapy, occupational therapy and psychologists to come to schools, dedicated to these students rather than the whole school. All parents have the experience that these are things that we have had to source ourselves at a high personal cost. Most schools do have specialist services but only once a fortnight, and for the whole school.

I did speak and I even managed not to shed a tear though my voice was rather shaky! I spoke briefly about the need to cater for the higher iq levels such as Beth. One member spoke of the rights of parents to give their child an education with their siblings in the mainstream school system. In response to this I replied that yes, they should have that right, but they should also have the right to send their child to an autism specific school if that is their choice. I spoke of High School being so much more difficult for our kids and how it wasn’t fair that the new school opening up for autistic kids would only cater to those with an iq score of under 70. As Margaret pointed out, kids with the lower scores are already eligible for the special schools so they had several choices. We seem to only have one. After the main speakers we spoke in groups about our issues. We spoke to the man who was the driving force behind the Autism school being there in the first place and he was most interested in what we had to say. In the end we decided that we would organise another forum ourselves and invite people higher up in parliament, outlining our stories and making it ‘real’ for them. The general consensus was that finally they are sitting up and taking notice, something that has taken a while. Still, who knows how long until it effects us.

We had an appointment with the Naturopath again last night. Beth’s amino acids were mainly clear but there were a few individual weaknesses so we treated them again. This just meant no red meat or cheese again which was fine. By the time we got home it was after six so we had tinned food on toast anyway. The only difference to her diet was that she couldn’t have cheese in her sandwich. Our next appointment is on Saturday (if Paul doesn’t have to work) so hopefully she’ll start on the brain work then. More and more I hear from people who have seen Nerida on a professional level and said how she has changed their lives. I’m so pleased that for each different treatment we’ve tried we seem to have hit the right people. There are so many quacks out there that take advantage of you. Not everything will work for everybody but if there is a little bit of improvement then it’s worth it to me.